With this time-tested formula, Snap-on embodies the coveted tenets of customer intimacy and consistency, building a strategic web of individual relationships over nearly eight decades that is as complex as a global computer network but as simple as its core selling proposition: providing products that help customers make money. Even third-generation Snap-on dealers are not uncommon, a testament to the company's strong commitment to its sales channel. Van Mater is the son of a Snap-on dealer. "The whole corporation is based on one thing: all the dealers getting up in the morning, getting behind the steering wheel and seeing that first customer," said Joseph Holmes Van Mater Jr., a veteran Snap-on dealer in Atlantic Highlands, N.J. Another 325 vans are driven by Snap-on technical representatives, who back up the dealers and their increasingly complex product line with training and expertise.Įach franchise dealer owns his own truck, combs his territory and vis-its his 200 to 300 customers every week, on a rotation as regular as clockwork. To sell their wares, Snap-on's 5,700 franchise dealers and sales representatives steer their ubiquitous white vans - actually rolling retail stores stocked with more than $100,000 worth of inventory - to 335,000 automobile dealerships, service stations and independent garages around the United States and abroad. The difference, many say, is its highly unusual marketing. Cornog, Snap-on's chief executive, insists that the company is a conservative Midwestern operation, it has thrived while many of its rust-belt brethren have struggled. But Snap-on traces its good fortune to three other key ingredients: an unwavering commitment to high-quality, premium-priced products for a large but clearly defined marketplace an unusual credit system that gives its customers access to those products and a well-oiled delivery system, employing an army of franchise dealers, that takes the product right to the customer's door. Its history of success is replete with the usual mix of serendipity, good management, savvy financial decisions and a dedicated and motivated work force. The Snap-on Tools Corporation, for example, has created a business model that combines the top-drawer cachet of a Louis Vuitton, the credit philosophy of a Wells Fargo and the convenience of the Good Humor Man, an odd but compelling amalgam that has put the company at the pinnacle of its market, significantly distancing it from the competition.Īnd though Snap-on's legendary brand status in the $20 billion automotive tool and equipment business is the result of a decidedly offbeat marketing approach, the company's experience offers lessons about quality, distribution and customer loyalty that apply as much to selling watches, shirts and computers as they do to selling tools.įrom its base in Kenosha, Wis., Snap-on has ridden America's love affair with the automobile to solid sales and profits since getting its start 78 years ago, racking up record earnings of $131 million in 1996 on revenues of $1.49 billion. Radical marketers have a lot to teach their more traditional big-business cousins.
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